Hello, citizens. Dr Vahlen's just finished her work on the alien navigational computers meaning we can now build Satellite Nexus installations.

These let us monitor more than one satellite at once but they require actual alien navigational computers to build. For that, we rely on UFO landings and crashes. We won't have any of those for a little while yet. I've also started research into a new fighter craft. That'll take a while to complete, but it's worth it.

Meanwhile...

"News just in..."

"y u do dis aleins"

dun dun dun DUN

:( aleins

fleeeeee

"What's the sound?"

"KKKLKKALKLKYLKLKYKKKHRAAAKK""*Wilhelm scream*"

Time to saddle up, it's a terror mission!

For this, we want the best equipped and armed soldiers we can field. I've bought a Railgun for Dabir, two heavy lasers for Zhang and Flan and sold off as much stuff on the Gray Market that I can afford in order to purchase Squad Size and Iron Will upgrades. I am serious about this, Terror missions have huge potential to go wrong.

We're taking the top six soldiers from the barracks today. I don't want any fuckups. Everyone's Aim is at least 70 before we start, so hopefully we'll get a decent amount of fire on target when it's needed.

"Laaast Christmas, I gave you my heart,But the very next day, you gave it away,This year, to save me from tears,I'll give it to someone special, special."

This map is based around a warehouse near the docks. It's pretty big and there's a lot of cover, so I'm not sure how well Alex will do, but the building is climbable, so there's hope yet.

In Terror Missions, there are civilians around the map who move at the end of the aliens' turn. They're our primary objective. Getting a squad member into that circle will "save" the civilian, give them the confidence to get to the Skyranger out of danger. The aliens will split their attention between the civvies and the squad, so in some ways it's pretty easy to survive, but very easy to get a bad rating on the mission review by letting too many civilians get killed.

The types of aliens we find on these missions vary. Floaters are pretty common; the aliens' main objective is to kill civilians, so something mobile to find and kill weaponless humans is perfect.

However, the alien we meet in this type of map that is totally invariable is the Chryssalid. These aliens use only melee attacks and land incredible amounts of damage. If they kill a human, they impregnate it and turn it into a zombie. This is the main threat from them: they make more enemies.

Civilians are prime targets for Chryssalids and they're our main focus. If you get a choice between aliens, go for the purple thing with claws.

At 8 health, they'll still get squashed by a lot of things, including railguns, as you can see above, but they're fast. They will very quickly seek and kill anyone that they focus on.

They deal large amounts of damage through melee attacks. Dabir is lucky due to his armour and abilities, but if that was a human, they'd probably panic, if not get killed in the first instance.

Dabir, however, can punch back.

Right back.

Zhang is a very valuable member of the team, but I might only deploy him as a high level bench member from now on. He'll cameo in terror missions, but he's going to be a secondary choice henceforth.

Pure fighting the good fight, there.

81% against something on the other side of the map? Yes, please. Let's take a look at the breakdown, something we've mostly ignored up until now.

Note the Chance to hit. Aim is ranked at 111% because that's Alex's base aim score. Everything else is subtracted or added from that.

Kill confirmed.

There was one other Floater on the map but it made the mistake of moving right into Alex's line of sight.

Note the Civilians saved box unique to Terror missions. The civilians were all killed offscreen somewhere. We had a counter in the top right of the screen, but there were some screams at the start of our turns indicating deaths of non-combatants. Alex really cleaned up here.

Pure's promotion is welcome but somewhat unexpected. However, with that nickname...

... we know what had to be done.

I'm giving Pure the ability Field Medic. This means we finally have a decent medic on the team. Took us bloody long enough.

The reward for completing the Terror Mission is a wonderful bonus: the entire continent calms down. This means that sometimes, getting lucky with where terror missions happen can save your entire game.

Now the hard grind is over, we can afford to put troops in for genetic modification. I'm going to put Alex up for some changes to make der Ubermann, but additionally, I'm going to think about modifying Garo when I have more money. Genetic modifications don't change a soldier's class, but they cannot be administered to a MEC trooper. There are no other drawbacks to having a soldier genetically modified, but there is a Second Wave setting (wonderfully named "Mind Hates Matter") that makes them incompatible with psychic power. This means that genetic modifications are essentially out of the question until the endgame.

This is the screen for Genetic Modification. You can only choose one Gene mod per body region, and you have to do research to discover all of them. You can have more than one modification made at a time, but for now, I'll just have one.

Notice the cost of genetic modification is a lot less than for cybernetics. This is reflected in the payoffs. Cybernetic augmentation provides you with an entirely new tank of a character. Gene mods merely supplement them.

That's it for three days. However, before we go...

Well, it looks like Dabir and SK are getting on just fine. Or maybe SK's drinking away his problems of NOT LANDING A SINGLE HIT and Dabir's giving him a pep talk. We'll deploy him next mission, see if he's improved in private.

Errata: changed TBD's character to have another name more in line with his preferences.

Now, let's bring Anakin out of the bacta tank.

There's that fucking line. Creeps me the fuck out.

"It's a boy!"

And lo, we have our genetically modified supersoldier.

Genetically modified troops get special versions of armour that show off their massive biceps. Seriously, there's no reason you'd have them exposed. But that's just so you can identify them as having nonstandard traits.

The council report is excellent. Let's keep it up.

Soon afterwards, we've finished our research. Note the talk about "gravity waves". Such things do exist, but they aren't what they're talking about, they're literal ripples in space-time thanks to the Big Bang and genuine evidence for Big Bang and rapid expansion theories being correct.

We'll start research into Titan Armour next. After that, better guns. We're also building our Alien containment, finally. This means we can get on with the story.

Our satellites have finished building, so now we can send one over to Germany and build a few more at a profit.

This means that not only do we get the instant £200, we get the income from the country at the end of the month. Time to send some interceptors over. Also note that their panic level's gone down compared to their panic at the council report.

Time for another Abduction mission! I'm going for the one in India because Asia has the most countries. If I don't do a mission there, they'll all panic and four countries is harder to placate than three. I'll send the UK a satellite to calm them down if they're too bad.

I'm sending SK as promised and a rookie to see if I can get some more UFF members online. I'm trying to get a good back row for when things start getting ugly.

Finally, we can start to look into capturing aliens. But first, we need to research the stun gun that'll let us do it. For that, we need to wait unti-

Oh, okay. Researching the Arc Thrower.

Ooh, council mission! It'll give us a lieutenant for Assault. That'll be interesting.

I get the impression that this is going to end up being the default squad we use for all missions. I'm okay with this.

Mission: Asthma.

A very long and linear map taking place on a collapsed bridge. This is going to be a cakewalk for Alex.

This fucker is a soldier who claims to be happy to help us get the VIP to the extraction point when we get him over, but he does jack shit when that does happen. Stupid bastard. Unfortunately, if you kill him, the mission's failed, too, so that's a shame.

The main threat on this map is from Thin Men, so it's not too hard at all. The sheer number of them can cause problems as they leave behind their poison clouds, so that can block a lot of moving area.

However, Dabir's Collateral Damage ability which can blow up cars is incredibly handy.

Shoot through cars? NOT A PROBLEM FOR UBERALEX

POW! And the dirt is gone!

... he says to the giant pink robot.

10% chance of missing. No mistakes, SK.

No mistakes at all.

I just had to get one of these in at some point: XCOM sometimes does action shots of soldiers running if they're the last person to move in a turn. Sometimes it's pretty cool, other times, it's hilarious. Imagine watching a squaddie running past several aliens all looking directly at them but not doing anything.

Mission completed.

Holy fuck, look at all those promotions! And Alex is now a Major!

This means he gets one of the most amazing traits, unique to the sniper: Low Profile. It means all cover is treated as high or full cover, meaning Alex can now safely sit behind anything and everything with little to no fear of reprisal!

Dabir's captaincy means he can either have Repair Servos that heal him for two every turn up to six in total for a mission or Expanded Storage, which allows him to have more ammunition for everything consumable. I'm siding with this because he has a huge amount of defence up to this point.

Pure (going to change his name and nickname to Pure "PS Vita", it's not clear otherwise) gets a choice between Revive (as above) or Suppression, similar to Flan. Critical wounds are a small chance of "deaths" that occur when a soldier hits zero health that gives them three turn to live, after which they bleed out. This means anyone with a medkit who can get to them can stabilise them and they'll live to fight another day. Revive means they're back in the fight, but I find that most people tend not to get critically injured, more killed straight up and off. To that end, I'm giving him Suppression.

Captain Garo gets to choose between "Bring 'Em On", an ability that adds damage to the top end of the critical hit cap up to five and Close Combat Specialist, which I think is a must-have for any assault. It makes them the best guardsmen that a team could wish for, and renders a lot of melee-based enemies less effective, if not totally useless. When we get Garo the best shotgun in the game, there will be nearly nothing that can stand up to him.

Oh man, we've got an Assault soldier whose nickname is D.O.A. This seems very familiar indeed: a crazy person who's happy to get in close and deal 9999 damage at the cost of being made from paper.

We've finally finished the research on the Arc thrower. We need something to use it on, so now we just wait for the next encounter.

Aha, a large UFO! This will be difficult and will certainly need both our fighters.

Shit. We didn't manage it. That's going to bite us in the ass. I've ordered three more interceptors. We need better equipment soon.

In the meantime, we've got another Workshop available. This increases the number of Engineers we have.

Ahh, the second of the Operation Slingshot DLC missions. This will be fun.

This is the team I'm going to take with me. Note that I'm not taking Zhang: it's not a requisite of the mission. Also note the three Arc-Throwers I'm taking with me. I want something to interrogate from this mission. It'll throw Mutons and Thin Men at me and I at least want a Muton. Thin Men are fragile enough that capturing one will be difficult. Mutons are hardy and can be reduced to low health but not quite killed by our stronger weapons pretty easily.

hahahahahahaha that naaaame hahaaaa

This is another lovely train station map, except this time, it's easy enough to get on top of the train and there's a turn counter. We have to finish this mission in ten turns or less, or we fail.

The objective is to get to a number of positions on the train and place small beacons.

These beacons will confuse an alien battleship's systems and cause it to just float about the city, letting us board and clear it.

I'm going to try to get Alex on top of the train as best as I can for a height advantage. Though it's linear, this map is really difficult to angle properly since all the cover's concentrated in one area.

Dabir's an interesting variable in this. On the one hand, he is very good at killing.

On the other hand, he's a very big target.

Garo's Rapid Fire can still kick ass, even with its aim penalty.

We've captured a Muton!

And a Thin Man!

Garo's role as a distraction is one he's suited for: being able to dodge Overwatch fire is a life-saver. The synergy between teammates lets some get in close to enemies they wouldn't otherwise be able to take out.

"End of the line, pal."

Oh, man, a cocky alien tried to flank and kill SK, but he just left himself open for a slapping.

SK KILLED SOMETHING!!! QUICK, PROMOTE HIM!

Alex is rearming and repositioning, we're going to be without sniper support for a turn.

... that's great, Officer Bradley, but the man on point is Pure, who can move from the last position to the cockpit in one turn.

Choo choo!

A great mission.

omg we have Captain Scarlet

CAPTAIN SCARLET

And SK's nickname is Buster :')

Ed Balls Buster.

Flan's two choices are Grenadier, letting her pack an extra grenade and do one more damage, and Danger Zone, which increases the area of effect of two of her three most effective attacks. Obviously going to get that. This means we can now suppress small groups of enemies if they're clustered together. Coupled with Rapid Reaction, it should mean we can have two free shots a turn.

I'm giving SK Suppression as well, it's a very useful ability that doesn't rely on AIM.

We also have some amazing research opportunities, including plasma weapons!

Since Dabir was wounded in his last deployment, I'm going to invest in some better armour for him for next time. It come with the bonus of having a grenade launcher, which is a brilliant ability to have.

Looks like Alex and PQ have hit the bar again.

Our specimens are in the Alien Containment facility and just get studied by scientists until interrogation. It's amusing how they react to it all, just staring around as if looking for an escape route.

Anyway, the next mission happens very soon afterwards, and it's the direct follow up to Dying Crone. This is where the booty comes in.

But notice Dabir's still on sick leave. This means we'll have to take MMX with us. This is going to be interesting. We'll see how it all works out after the jump. See ya.

This is the Cyberdisc. It's STUPID. Thankfully, MMX is using a shotgun and can take up to three shots a turn, so it was destroyed next turn.

Flan moving into the next room. That sectoid's about to get dicked.

Garo takes out Thin Men as they drop out of the SKY

SK's on a roll, today! Got himself a field promotion!

Garo's about to pick on someone that's more than his own size.

Bullied.

Alex clearing the way for SK and MMX, there. Remember, the mission's objectives are to destroy the conduits or disable them manually. We have two heavies with rocket launchers stationed with an overview to both of the conduits.

... Pure? What's up there that's so interesting?

SK's rocket finds its mark!

Jesus Christ, look at that blast radius! That's Danger Zone for you.

Mission accomplished.

Promotions! We have our first Colonel!

And Jesus, look at all that loot! This means we'll be able to make a full set of Titan armour for everyone!

We'll take a gander at the post-battle promotions next time. 'Til then!

We have an abundance of new Squaddies; this means we get to make a load of new UFF members!

I'm going to customise the ones that are relevant and then dismiss everyone else. This post is just going to revolve around customising troops and assigning promotions.

Our first new member is going to be Dr Thunderous. An assault class, I thought that he'd be deserving of being the lightning strike of the back bench.

Next up, Rumia; a support class suits Rumia's role and attitudes.

Taking a smooooooth player look is SnipeHeart, with a fitting class.

A heavy is blunt, a heavy is ZarroTsu.

drac won't afraid of anything any time soon.

Eboshidori reppin' the classics.

Sofia was close enough to Sonia that we can fudge the closeness. SINSTG reporting for duty!

And that's all the new kids sorted out. Time to look at promotions!

Starting with Spriter, I'm going to give him HEAT ammo because lol is he ever going to hit stuff properly.

Captain Question gets to improve the power of his smoke grenade, a tool he has not yet used, but I'm sure he will soon enough.

Major Garo Cowboy Bebop lifts. He lifts like fuck. He lifts so much his ARMS give him armour.

And Colonel AlexMdle gets to choose his ultimate ability: Double Tap, as above, and In The Zone, making every kill he makes against flanked targets or targets not in cover a free action. I tend to find that In The Zone is temperamental, it doesn't always have a decent rate of fire, especially if the enemies are solid and won't die in single hits. Therefore, I will give him Double Tap, guaranteeing two shots against any target he pleases every other turn.

Additionally, everyone in the top eight gets Titan Armour. This is the best armour we can afford for ground troops. It makes them immune to poison, fire and strangulation, so Seekers are no longer a problem!

A slight issue with the default look is that it looks like a bodysuit. It's powered armour, designed to protect the wearer and ease their vitals, for example, when they're walking across burning objects.

It sometimes really works; the colours are vivid and clear, and they look like hard shells of armour, but there are times when you want a different look, like with Garo.

Titan Armour makes you look like you're built for war. It's the ultimate armour in XCOM's arsenal for defence, but there is one set of armour that I want to give to Alex at some point, and another that needs to be made for the final missions. The armour I want to give Alex is being researched at the moment. But first...

This is the biggest addition to XCOM from the Enemy Within pack. EXALT is a paramilitary organisation with equipment and training similar to XCOM.

What they lack in high tech, they make up for in numbers and jammy deployment spots. They have a tendency to surround and flank very well, but we can defeat them. It just takes time. A lot of time.

EXALT can do a number of things to XCOM, from steal money (as they have done in this instance) to raising panic in countries. That last one can be a proper problem, especially now that we have countries at panic level three. We need to fuck these guys up fast.

Unfortunately, their cells are well hidden. Once to twice a month, we'll be able to pin down locations, but until then, they're invisible, untouchable.

To shut them down, we send an unarmoured soldier on a Covert Operation. This takes them our of our pool of soldiers for a number of days after which we need to undertake an extraction mission, coupled with some normal objectives like take and hold or checkpointed scenarios.

The covert operatives take only a pistol and items: they can't carry primary weapons or armour. It's a covert operation, after all, and you can't hide a laser sniper rifle very easily. As a result, Heavies aren't eligible: they don't use pistols. MEC troopers would stick out like sore thumbs, so we can't send them either, so we must think carefully about who we send. I'm going to be sending MMX on this mission, not because he'd be any good at it, but because he has a lot of abilities that mean he could use his pistol effectively. It'll make him halfway decent in the rescue operation.

Okay, so we've just finished research on the armour I hope to be giving to Alex.

Archangel armour is like Titan armour with two differences: it has a health bonus two lower than Titan armour and it has a jetpack.

The reason I don't give it to everyone is that flying isn't actually that useful. It means you're exposed, without cover and normally it's a waste of time. However, for a squadsight sniper who would benefit from being in the air, it's perfect.

It's also prohibitively expensive, and seeing how EXALT's stolen all of our remaining money, it's not really financially viable.

Abductions! They're in countries that have large amounts of panic, however, so we need to choose carefully.

I intend to put some satellites over South America within the next fortnight. It should be enough to lower Argentina's panic. By the end of the month, I'll have four new satellites, so asides from the two in South America, I can lower the panic of any two countries I like.

Notice we're taking Kin. With MMX on a covert operation and Dabir still in sickbay, we've run out of experienced people, so we're going to have to take a squaddie with us.

>bloody knife

The map's near the docks, there's a shipping office and a warehouse further up. Nonlinear, so Alex is going to have some killzones, but there is a metric ton of cover.

AHAHAHAHAHA SEEKERS GET SHIT ON WE GOT TITAN ARMOUR AHAHAHAHA

omg SK

Seekers are reduced to using their laser weapons, instead becoming guerilla softies. This one uncloaked and missed Alex narrowly.

The office had some Floaters inside; maybe we can capture one.

Now, I wonder where that Floater's got to...

Surely that's not where the seeker is?!?!?

Grenade says yes!

Floater GET

All three thin men took shots at Flan at this point...

... and not one of them hit.

A rocket and one Alex snipe later and we're done.

Wahoo, promotions! Major Scarlet and Corporal Kin, congrats.

Flan gets one of the Heavy class' best abilities at Major level: Will To Survive.

Kin, I'm going to make a Snap Shot sniper. Snap Shot means that she can take shots even after she's moved. This makes her effectively a really accurate soldier, which is something we might need later on.

These are the rewards we get for that mission: a veteran heavy. Before we reassign them, let's take a look at the Situation Room.

In the meantime, I've decided to change the new heavy into SINSTG and dismiss the lower ranked soldier. Hopefully we can expect her to take part in the future.

Heading to Mission Control gives us this warning. Losing Argentina will not happen: we can get some satellites up before the end of the month.

I'm going to put SK into the Genetics Lab and give him better eyes. Hyper Reactive Pupils, giving him better aim after a missed shot, should do the trick.

I also ordered a couple of new soldiers. One was female, so unfortunately I dismissed her because she didn't fit the userlist. The other, however, was male, and a heavy. I've chosen VortexReaper as the candidate for the role.

Just look at that soulless helmet.

Look at it.

Oh, for fuck's sake, this soon? Really? We just finished a mission! Fuck you, fine.

Dabir's back on his feet now, so we should be covered for SK. He's now bigger, badder and boomer with his new grenade launcher.

The team we're sending. Note I'm not bothering to send an Arc Thrower this time, not because it's a waste of effort, but more because I really can't be bothered.

Final Shroud. Lies.

Hope there are no Slender Thin Men in this forest map.

awwwww, get your torches out

popped a cap in 'is ass

This is a pretty big ship. Not the biggest we've seen, but it's by no means the smallest.

This daft floater took cover where Flan flanks it. killcount++;

here is the churchhere is the steepleopen the doorand here is the LASER

Kin has unconventional methods of knocking.

An Outsider punched out of existence later... this mission got us no promotions, which isn't a surprise, there wasn't much of a challenge.

Okay, here's the deal. MMX, the operative is in a remote bit of the map.

He has to get to two communication towers like these and use an ability called EXALT Comm Hack.

Our team is here, on the other side of this destroyed army base. Time to roll out.

These are EXALT troops, all armed with conventional weaponry. Later, they get more advanced weapons, but for the moment, they're just us a few weeks ago. Dressed in suits, they're genetically modified, symbolising their synergy with the aliens.

They use tactics similar to XCOM ones; they have medic, sniper and heavy soldiers with relevant weapons and the medic has a health pack or three.

They'll also die like XCOM soldiers.

They're pretty resilient, too: a standard soldier has about 8 health, which is enough to withstand a laser sniper rifle to the face once.

MMX can make small token shots against the enemy, too, but the pistol is a piss-poor weapon at the best of times. He still manages to tot up two kills in the campaign, as well as dodging a point-blank shot from an EXALT operative with an assault rifle. Man, do you remember those days when being right next to a target didn't guarantee a kill?

Dabir's grenade launcher is really, really good. Just going to say.

Every so often, you'll hear the whirr of helicopter blades and EXALT will airdrop in reinforcements. These tend to be really annoying if they're not dealt with immediately because they do pick some outstanding positions to flank you. Granted, they're never in cover, but it's really pretty clever.

Standing the operative next to an active comm tower will allow you to click on it similar to a Meld Canister and hack it.

Once that's done, rush the operative to the extraction point and mop up if desired. EXALT are pretty good for experience farming, with their reasonably weak soldiers and equipment.

... interesting trajectory, there, Kin.

It didn't take long to get MMX out of there. I'm pitching Kin against the world to get her some experience. Otherwise, it's Fifth Fleet mopping up.

She's not doing too well with that rifle, but he can't do much harm either.

A headshot nails the bastard. XCOM triumphantly jizzes on the face of EXALT as the first of what promises to be an absolute bukkake of successes.

Pro motions! And daaamn, Kin's cool. She's also the first to get three names all of the same length.

Pure gets a very useful skill called Deep Pockets. It's a strictly better Grenadier, because it applies to everything with counters, including the Arc Thrower.

Kin gets Gunslinger to make her effectively a better straight up soldier. A very nice utility, I'm sure you'll agree.

And Major MAN JACKSON gets Overdrive; this will make him stupendously dangerous to face in combat.

This is where the biggest payoffs are in the Covert Operations. Intelligence, money and panic reduction, all in one.

Notice the nature of the data we have. It tells us where the EXALT base is not. The whole charade is a massive game of Cluedo until we work out where the base is. We can accuse a country of harbouring EXALT, but if we get it wrong, that country leaves the council on account of you being a prick.

MMX is going to get the Bring 'Em On trait because he asked to be a purely offensive character. This means he foregoes Lightning Reflexes; perhaps a poor decision.

Also of interest is the fact that we can recover EXALT weapons. They aren't alien ones that blow up when the user dies. Later on, they start using laser weaponry, which is a pretty decent drop, if you ask me. They have the same stats as XCOM gear of the same tech level, and in my opinion, the EXALT laser weaponry just looks cooler than XCOM's designs.

We'll end on Bradley's speech to us: this cell was part of a huge network of EXALT groups. We're going to have to dig deep if we're going to fight a war on two fronts against

[09:29:53] Spriter: "Pro motions! And daaamn, Kin's cool. She's also the first to get three names all of the same length."[09:29:55] Spriter: OBJECTION[09:30:12] Spriter: Flandre "Richter" Scarlet is also three names all of the same length

I stand corrected: I rescind my earlier statement that Kin's name was the first that had three equal length components.

To consummate his correction, I'm going to award Spriter a medal.

Medals are a new system to Enemy Within that mildly improve soldiers. They're awarded for different things: up until this point, I haven't shown you any, but at the end of some missions, I've been given medals to hand out.

However, as Commander, I haven't yet had decided to use my prerogative to award them.

That said, I think the time has come to award a few.

Medals have different unlock requirements that are specific to their medal type. For example, the Defender Medal is first available when a soldier of XCOM dies and additional medals are awarded during subsequent missions up to a maximum of four. The Urban Combat Medal is received for completing a mission in, you guessed it, an urban environment.

The way medals work is that you must choose one of two abilities that the medal bestows. This is permanent and affects all medals of the same type. Once that's done, you can also change the name of the medal and award it. Soldiers can only have one medal of each type.

For this medal, I've chosen to give the soldier a higher willpower for each different nationality in the squad because everyone's different. Multiculturalism! I've also renamed the badge to something suitable for its ability.

The Urban Combat Badge is the most common award that can be bestowed. We get four of these in total.

I've given it the power to improve aim against enemies in full cover. This should be welcome to many members.

I tend to use this medal to stop people panicking, but since we don't have that happen often enough, I'm going to make it a medkit medal.

And the name suits the reception.

The Council Medal Of Honor is a rarer award that's given to you for completing a number of council missions or terror missions. It's the most justifiable medal we've seen so far.

I'm giving it the aim and critical chance specialty because we're getting to a point where critical hits are very important at taking enemies down.

Being alone is often a sense of peace and knowing oneself that doesn't normally come about in the chaotic goings on of everyday life, much less battlefield.

So, these are our medals so far. There's one more that's yet to be unlocked, but that lives faaaar in the future...

FOR HIS SERVICES TO WHAT IS RIGHT, WE AWARD AN ORDER IN THE CHAOS TO SPRITER "BUSTER" ED BALLS.

FOR HIS EXCELLENT SKILLS SUPPORTING THE SQUAD, WE AWARD ALEX "NIGHTMARE" MDLE THE I'VE GOT THIS FUCKER PIN'D. HE WILL ALSO LATER RECEIVE AN ORDER IN THE CHAOS FOR HIS STERLING WORK REACHING THE RANK OF COLONEL FIRST.

I'll award the rest of the medals as and when people reach the rank of Colonel. Notice how Alex and SK have little symbols next to their name. This singles them out as award winners. You get an icon for every award you get, and if you manage to get all five, you can look just like an African dictator.

Satellites! We'll need to wait five days until the Satellite Nexus is operational to send them up, though. Note the workshop rebate. The more engineers we have, the more likely and the higher in values rebates are.

Plasma rifle researched! We now have access to the top tier of weapons, the same as the aliens themselves. This is a massive bonus... if we can afford it.

... which we can't. Note that it's not for want of alloys or elerium, but for money. We'll get that soon enough.

Nexus operational!

Sending a satellite over Argentina RIGHT AWAY

Sending satellite over Brazil completes coverage over South America and gives us a continental bonus! This will speed up research by quite a bit.

Even more satellites! This means we can start covering other areas, too.

Putting a satellite up over Mexico also saves us more money on aircraft. This is a brilliant bonus to have, especially with the end of the month report coming up.

Plasma Pistol research is finished just in the nick of time, which not only means we can build more powerful handguns, but we can also do all our autopsies and interrogations before the end of the month! Cheeky.

Look at all of those. Priority research is highlighted when the game thinks you've spent too long dicking around. I'll finish this post here and make the next one an CSI Special. Toodles.

Last post, we left off here, just about to start interrogating aliens. Some of the dialogue is actually pretty interesting and it reveals a lot of the background nature of the developers when they were designing aliens.

In the interest of continuity and the story, I'm going to do all of the autopsies first. The autopsies follow the basic pattern of introductory text on the selecting research page, a short amount of dialogue presenting initial findings and a results page. I'll copy the unshown transcripts for each from the Wikia in case there are some missing from the screenshots I take.

I would just like to say this before we start, this is not how you perform autopsies. It's a terrible misrepresentation.

We'll begin with the Sectoid.

"The research team is now referring to this particular variation as a "Sectoid," based on the unusual structure of its internal organs, which we believe to be the product of genetic manipulation. As we've seen in the field, this species also seems to harbor some sort of telepathic ability..."

Standard results report. Note the codename: Roswell.

Next up, the Floater.

"The Research team is continuing in its efforts to determine how the aliens prevented the organic tissue from rejecting the mechanical components, as they seem to work in perfect harmony with one another."

The Floater was seen to be one of the more horrific units among the aliens' ranks, so it makes sense that there is to be some form of mixed morality here.

The Thin Man is our next subject, and he promises to be interesting for our genetics labs...

"Initial testing has revealed a concerted effort by the aliens to modify this specimen's genetic structure in such a way as to make it appear human. However, on closer inspection, they seem to have had some trouble concealing the eyes, which appear to be reptilian in nature..."

This report is so long there's a bit cut off at the end. It's of no consequence, merely a repeat of the Floater text saying the Unit Analysis view is useful. We can take a look at that in the next mission.

Amongst the projects this has unlocked, we have Muscle Fibre Density, an incredibly useful ability.

Let's see if the Muton is as helpful.

"I can only assume there's a colorful backstory for such a designation."

ITA: Dr Vahlen not in touch with the soldiers.

The end of the report is as follows:

"Although I can only guess as to the alien's intentions, it certainly appears that the Floaters may have at one time been Mutons themselves. If the aliens have been experimenting with the Muton physiology, perhaps the Floaters are a byproduct of their less successful attempts at genetic manipulation.

We may be able to gain further insight into this creature's combat capabilities by targeting another example in the field in the Unit Analysis View."

Two very important upgrades come out of that autopsy. This Foundry project is doubtless one of the most useful things we could research. Running out of ammunition is a problem with suppressing tactics since it uses two portions of ammo.

Adrenal Neurosympathy is a highly useful trait for soldiers in the middle range of the squad. Flan, Pure or SK could do with this.

The Chryssalid is the one of the only totally organic alien species we can't capture. They have skin that makes them immune to the effects of the Arc Thrower. It seems that nobody will mind if we kill every one we see.

This is all Dr Vahlen has to say on the matter, apparently.

The report is much more comprehensive. The ending is as follows:

"Targeting another example in the field through the Unit Analysis View may provide additional information as to its combat capabilities.

One final note, which may be of particular interest in regards to our own genetic modification enhancement work - we have finally managed to isolate the Chryssalid exoskeleton's sensory capabilities, and they were in fact electroreceptors as I had initially suspected. It is my hope that we can use this discovery to enhance our soldiers' own abilities in regards to sensing and detecting enemy movement in the field."

Also, note the codename for the project. Somewhere, a lonely xenomorph screams.

Two very useful things come out of this, though oddly, they didn't give me the notifications that the others did. Chitin Plating is one of the more expensive but more useful items we can give to soldiers. The significant reduction to melee damage is really quite incredible, and it give the user two more health.

Bioelectric skin is also very useful, if a little weaker in the midgame. It allows a soldier to display where, though not what, is in areas that you can't see, say, behind a wall. It also forces Seekers nearby to lose their cloak, further dicking them. Just to clarify, I'm not giving the skin to Garo, just using him as an example.

The Cyberdisc is one of the most annoying enemies to face in XCOM. With its absurd evasion and massive guns, it's bound to be a problem. You've luckily not seen it in action yet because we got lucky with MMX having a shotgun and being one square away, but it could have gone south fast.

"At the present time, we know that the "Cyberdisc," as they've been calling it, is heavily armed, but it shows no clear pattern of behavior on the battlefield."

Not really much to say here.

This genetic modification is the one that makes Revive worthwhile. Causing people to bleed out gives us one last go at taking out enemies, but with only one support soldier, Pure's going to have a hard time if we were to suddenly expect him to deal with five wounded soldiers.

The last autopsy on our list, the Seeker gives us one of our most useful genetic modifications.

"It is my hope that we can adapt these various concealment techniques into a form that allows our soldiers greater stealth capabilities in combat, which should reduce casualties. It may also be possible to use what we've learned to develop weapons systems and equipment that mirror some of these techniques. Our Unit Analysis View available in the field should provide additional specifics regarding this species' various combat abilities."

Take a look at that codename: Lovecraft. Fucking excellent.

As is this. Alex and Kin are getting this right away. The entire text for the description reads:"Confers the ability to change skin pattern to match cover. When a soldier moves to high cover, enemies without special abilities will not target soldier. Does not work if any enemies have line of sight to the soldier's starting position. Leaving cover or firing will break this concealment."

Remember the snipers' Low Profile ability? Everything is high cover. Unfortunately, this is the most expensive genetic modification available, and with good reason. We'll get on it later.

It's time to interrogate our subjects. The first one will initiate a cutscene. I'll move that to after the Sectoid interrogation bits.

Proposals, as before.

Scientists gather to watch the subject before... well.

I'm so sorry.

Interrogations give us what's called Research Credit. A viable and somewhat attractive manner of doing research is to do interrogations alongside other research. Credit applies when you have information that would help your future projects. Beam Weapons credit speeds up research into beam weapons, so on and so forth.

Everything in this spoiler is from the cutscene. You'll get the idea of what happened from these.

So there you have it. Dr Vahlen lobotomised the poor sod.

It has given us a new objective to work with, though. We can get to work on this soon enough.

I'll get on with the rest of the interrogations quickly. Same format as autopsies.

Of... all the interrogations, this is the most disquieting. The Thin Man doesn't make any attempt to escape. He terrifyingly walks towards the front of the chamber and... stares. Until the light blots him out and the blast doors shut him away.

After that slightly depressing session, I think it's time to take a break from XCOM. Until next time.

EDIT:18:54 - ShadowSpectre: I did, however, miss the CSI Miami opportunity18:54 - ShadowSpectre: I couldn't think of any puns for autopsies that made the cut18:54 - ShadowSpectre: YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH